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wryly.
    Jacques was telling Monsieur Lafayette that when he grew up he wanted more than anything to be a famous balloonist like the great Nadar, and voyage over plains and ice caps, deserts and seas to the lands of the fearsome dragons and insects.
    â€˜You don’t have to go up in a balloon to meet a dragon,’ chuckled Monsieur Lafayette, taking out a cigar and a strip of matches. ‘They’re all over the place. I was married to one for a time. Until she ran off with a wolf!’
    â€˜One to the wolf and one to the water,’ Mistigris started up; and Eveline glowered at Monsieur Lafayette in exasperation. ‘See what you’ve done?’ she demanded, stacking up the plates and crashing into the kitchen with them. The girls on the Rue Ornano wouldn’t have to put up with all this. Theirs was a life of bows and silks, sales and crinolines. La Païva had an onyx staircase and a golden bathroom and what did she, Eveline have? A leaking roof, an overgrown vine...
    â€˜Sis, sis,’ called Jacques, breaking into her thoughts. ‘Can I borrow some stockings to practise my knots with?’
    â€˜No,’ she shouted and then a little more gently, ‘Well, perhaps an old pair… but not the coloured ones.’ She watched him scramble down, the cat at his heels and streak out of the room.
    â€˜A little mother to us all!’ Monsieur Lafayette remarked sententiously; and she glowered at him again. It was the last thing she wanted to be. At her age. He may have brought sardines but the man was a menace all the same. If he wasn’t scaring Jacques half to death, he was upsetting her father, reminding him of things he didn’t need reminding of.
    â€˜Dear heart, dear heart!’ the menace declared now, puffing on his cigar like a fish on the bank, his legs stretched underneath the table. ‘Does my heart good just to look at her. Upon my soul, it does my heart good to look at her. No gold dust needed on those fair curls. No gowns from couturiers. Dress her in a sack cloth and she’d outshine the lot of ’em. There are millions of girls in Paris, some virgins and innocents, some fast and loose, some fancy free; but there is only one, could only ever be one… Eveline.’ Perhaps it was out of respect that he spoke in such a roundabout way, or even shyness for it was only now, upon pronouncing her name, that he turned to look at her.
    There was a long silence punctuated by the snores of old Mistigris and the sound of Jacques clattering into the room.
    â€˜Monsieur Lafayette,’ Eveline began at last, colouring a little though she could hardly take him seriously with his bald head and piggy little eyes.
    â€˜Modeste, please.’
    â€˜Monsieur Modeste Lafayette! You are old enough to be my grandfather!’
    â€˜Father surely!’
    â€˜Grandfather,’ she assured him. ‘And as I have pointed out many times I would not marry you if you were the last man standing.’
    â€˜Well, well,’ said Monsieur Lafayette, blowing smoke rings over the stonecutter’s head. ‘The way this war is going I might well be just that.’ And he coughed three times as if to emphasise the point or to sound a valediction for the soon to be departed.
    Eveline pursed her lips and looked at Jacques who was fumbling about on the floor beside the laundry basket. He must have felt her eyes upon him for he stood up, beaming, and held out the stockings she had set her heart on wearing that evening. ‘That’s a slip in that leg and a quick release in the other,’ he announced proudly; and then, as if the matter had engaged his brain for a while: ‘What’s a harlot, Sis?’
    She stared at him blankly, not knowing whether to laugh or cry at the question or the little urchin who held her stockings all twisted up in his hands.
    Monsieur Lafayette came to the rescue. ‘An extra-ordinary mother, my lad,’ he smiled. ‘An